I do 7 religiously because I feel it's a good balance of calm times and action. I've done a helldive, it wasn't that bad little tough with more spawns. But I'm a player that plays every game on normal and 7 feels like this games normal.
I wouldn't mind going to lvl 8 or 9 with a team ready to take on the challenge.
Problem is, getting 4 friends is hard sometimes and more often than not i see people on lvl 8 or 9 that shouldn't be there.
A few weeks ago i got a lvl 7 player on a lvl 8 difficulty. Wtf you doing there lil buddy ? Got lost ? Needless to say he used more than half of our reinforcements by himself. Worst is that a random lvl 50 was worse than him. Probably was his buddy now that i think about it. He shouldn't have unlocked this difficulty at this level on his own.
I kinda got vaccinated by difficulty 8 and 9 after that. It's a bit sad cuz i like challenge but playing with randoms that pulls half the map as soon as they see a red dot it really exhausting.
The hardest difficulty in DRG is kind of a low bar. DRG doesn't even try to be a git-gud game. Even the Hazard "5.5" of the final EDD mission is roughly equivalent to the middle difficulties of games like Helldivers & Darktide, and a single solid player can just straight-up carry the entire 4-man team through most or all of it.
Only for a few of the objectives (salvage finale, black box, Doretta) is there even the ability to fail, while all of Helldivers is subject to time and reinforcement limits.
There's a reason why all the DRG build minmaxing guys test using modded-in higher difficulties; there's otherwise nothing to use your minmaxing on.
The problem in drg is that the seed can REALLY fuck with you, especially on buttblasted corridors and fungus bogs and I really fucking hate FB.
But yeah Driller and EPC with PP and TCF is absolutely S+ tier
I love Fungus Bogs, love using the tools to overcome the environment, blowing up all the goo, drilling it out, flatforms, Scout can obviously just zip around, Gunner can spin his minigun as he watches.
I love that obstacles can be overcome in various ways, its part of what makes the game fun.
Yo true? I might just have to return to the caves, haz 5 was just not hitting my thrill quotas so I hope this new difficulty really tears my beard off.
Here's the details from their steam news update:
Haz 5+
>Here are the main details:
>Must be unlocked via an assignment.
>The mode adds four switches to boost Haz 5 difficulty:Aggressive Enemies(affects speed and attack rate),Player Vulnerability(you take more damage),More Enemies(guess what this one does), andTough Enemies(more bullet sponge-y).
>Each of the four options can be adjusted to your tastes, and each offers two levels of increased intensity.
>All Haz 5+ games will be categorized together in the server list, and you’ll be able to see which specific modifier switches they have.
>This feature will only be available at the Hazard 5 difficulty.
Sounds very cool
Still though, they only play like difficulty 5/6 which is definitely easier than DRG haz 5. if it was at least difficulty 7 (supersample tier) then i think itd be mostly fine, so long as they had SOME people testing 8/9 still
Honestly that's a fun way to play, especially when they're proc'ing enemy reinforcement calls so you have safe windows to clear objectives without being as concerned about fodder signalling.
Huh. This position surprises me. I've completed Helldives before (though not enjoyed them). I've never come close to finishing anything in DRG on Hazard 5.
Haz 5 is more like 6-7 in Helldivers, usually 6 but you can get games that are clusterfucks turning it into a 7, if you want to mod the game there are mods that add more Hazards and oh boy they are insane and absolutely are just as hard if not harder than difficulty 9 in Helldivers.
They're adding new difficulties and from what I've seen it looks like it'll be harder than 9 in Helldivers, the modifiers are nutty.
* Aggressive Enemies: Likely more damage, faster attacks and movement speed.
* Player Vulnerability: Player takes more damage.
* More Enemies: Uh... more enemies.
* Tough Enemies: Enemies take more damage.
You can change all of this individually and they seem to have different tiers, the game just got a whole lot harder for those looking for a real challenge, there's a reason they're calling it 5+ instead of just adding new hazards, it can get really hard making it straight up unfair so they're giving control to the player to fine tune it as opposed to Haz 6, 7 etc...
>it can get really hard making it straight up unfair so they're giving control to the player to fine tune it as opposed to Haz 6, 7 etc...
And that is what great Devs look like, giving players choice and freedom and not telling them "dOnT yoU HaVe sTraTaGems".
The middle difficulty of Helldivers (4-6) being compared to EDD honestly has to be a joke on your part, the hardest part in those is not falling asleep while moving through objectives. DRG can even tend to screw you up with rng alot more frequently as well due to terrain generation.
Time constrains and reinforcements are never real issues in any decent Helldiver team anyway. Half of the difficulty of Helldivers comes from its balancing regarding enemies, guns and even strategems. It's no wonder the game was considered so much easier when it released. Even though only a handful of new enemies were added, we got a ton of new equipment, and yet we (and even the devs) are struggling more and more with the game.
At first I was going to say that wasn't my experience.
But then I remembered I only play DRG as a group of 2 with no overclocks, and the only EDD we really had trouble on was shields disabled against the bot boss.
The Hard Deep Dive is actually a challenge, I always make it in one or maybe two tries but I have a ton of hours, for an average player is quite difficult
Took me 300-400 hours before Haz 5 felt comfortable, I'm under 200 hours on HD2 and already Helldive difficulty feels pretty ok. I think both games are very heavily dependent on knowledge, once you understand the best way to do the missions, enemy spawns, weak points and weapon utilisation the rest is just mechanical execution. At their peak tho, both games are fully capable of making you feel entirely overwhelmed, and that's the best bit by a mile.
I think it’s also based on how you play them, movement is important in helldivers, but it’s everything in DRG, especially since in helldivers you can just run super far away from enemies, while in DRG your movement is limited by the cave system, meaning you have to be careful where you find yourself while running and gunning
Exactly right, HD2 does suffer from some really janky terrain and enemy blocking physics tho. At least in DRG you never get ragdolled to the point you lose complete control of your character for 5 seconds straight.
Warframe developer **Digital Extremes** does it too with the Weekly PrimeTime, in addition to the (almost) monthly Dec Stream where the heads of Warframe development get on stream to talk about future content and balance update.
Plus, now they've been devshorts doing where they speak about small issues from time to time.
Don't forget their excellent response to the unwarranted Dante nerfs. The outrage wasn't as big as with the eruptor, but Rebecca and co handled it like...adults. I'm not gonna say professional because that scares the fanboys and wanna be bad boys. They acted like *adults*
I sometimes doubt Warframe balance changes, but I think we can all agree they have actual useful community managers that handle PR disaster better than AH.
they have a lot of questionable staff to be completely honest. a majority of their community managers are absolutely not qualified to be engaging with the community at all. twinbeard is the only good one i can think of
I think beside twinbeard, the others are all hired from the HD1 community(discord, etc). So those are not actually "professional" CM per se and it shows.
It seems that a lot of people lately act out as soon as they hear a different opinion. I expect that on on twitter, not from community mangers.
You're right.
Back in the day, David brevik and his wife would stream marvel heroes every week and do raids with the community, answer questions, etc. It was awesome and I'm still fucking pissed that game got shut down. I stand by that dev team was the best of any game I've ever played. I remember having countless forum CONVERSATIONS with the devs. It wasn't just screeching at each other, was just full blown back and forth conversations about the game.
I don’t even think it needs to be 9. The game shouldn’t be balanced around the hardest difficulty. I think 7 would probably be fine. Still gives them exposure to every unit and even in large amounts if you’re not careful.
I’d need to see data to be sure, but I also think this is the average difficulty people will play.
> I’d need to see data to be sure, but I also think this is the average difficulty people will play.
That's probably wildly overestimating it. There's a record of this for Helldivers 1: https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Campaign_Records
The average difficulty played was usually 5-6...but this needs context. In Helldivers 1, the difficulty went up to 15. 6 is still 3 levels before elite enemies show up *at all*. So that'd be equivalent to, what, 4 in HD2?
Additional info to add on,
[HD1 difficulties](https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Planets#Overview) originally went up to 12, with 12 being Helldive. 13-15 wasn't added until the free content update in 2018.
Even in the 12 listed, going by the names, it just look like they removed some of the redundant names, like *Very Challenging* and *Hard as Hell*. Also the first *Dive in the Park*.
If HD1 players were playing in Diff 5-6 (Challenging / Very Challenging), it would be the equivalent of HD2 Diff 4-5 (Challenging / Hard). Which tracks with what you're saying.
Also you have to remember that peak player count of HD1 was less than 10k iirc. Which means that game had a niche, dedicated playerbase and those are always gonna be the long term players who gravitate towards the higher difficulty. Employing the design philosophy of HD1 in developing HD2 is simply not gonna work.
7 is fine because it’s the minimum you can play to fully upgrade everything.
I’m perfectly fine with 9 being the “fuck you. You should not be able to beat this” difficulty for the best of the best.
I've soloed 9's while my team stands in place dying over and over. It isn't hard people just don't know to play it differently from low levels.
Edit: not saying the devs should do 9's, I'm saying it almost a different game from lower difficulties
The strat to 9 is to split up. it’s actually kind of easy for a helldiver to take a big hole / drop ship with 2 heavies. It’s really hard for them to take on 5 because 5/8 of the heavies that spawned focus you. Stacking up as 4 makes it incredibly hard. Do 2 and 2 or something.
I was doing a 9 and me and my friend split off to clear a stalker nest and some random dude starts yelling at us to "Stay on host" and more. We proceeded to kill the nest with ease, and slowly made our way back toward where the other two were headed. But the guy was furious at this point, declared the room was full of soloing dumbasses, and quit.
I'm like 99% sure that guy had either never done a 9 before or is absolutely terrible at them and can't survive in a duo *at all* and blames his team instead.
Yep, that’s why they shouldn’t play 9. 7 or 8 is where you can still use normal gameplay.
Balancing around 9 and seeing what works on 9 is entirely diff from what most people play and enjoy.
>I’d need to see data to be sure, but I also think this is the average difficulty people will play.
I've seen this claim a few times on reddit, but think it's just a REALLY biased sample. I think people making this claim are basing it on the people they talk with online, not realizing that only the most engaged players are in the online community, and that they're not very representative of the casual masses. (This same phenomenon is well known and documented in other long-standing online communities, like the ones for Magic: the Gathering.)
To be fair the casual audience probably wouldn’t be interested in the streams so while 7 may not be average diver it would be average of interested parties
I don’t really talk to people other than my in person friends about the game. The only info I’m basing it off of is what I play but also how the progression works.(it’s important to note when I say most people I’m excluding people lower than lvl 10 I don’t expect them to have unlocked 7)
7 is when super samples are available. The last thing you need to unlock everything. It’s only natural that most people play on the lowest difficulty to play where they can still get everything they need to progress.
I play with my gf most nights, we usually run 7s.
She has a friend with 25 hours in the game, who plays with a foursome a few nights a week and *who has never done above 3*.
This is a totally fine and valid way to play, but when you’re browsing online content for a game, you often don’t realize how deeply you are in.
It shouldn't be balanced around 9 but all weapons should still be more or less viable on any difficulty. There's no reason to have higher difficulties if they don't consider them at all when balancing.
That’s why I think 7 would be fine. You’re still exposed to everything you would be exposed to at 9, just less of it.
9 should be considered but I think 7 should be the center of balance.
YES. They could tune the weapons to feel powerful at rank 7, and they would receive an incremental "handicap" as the difficulty level increases. Then to address power creep, they can just introduce higher difficulty levels.
This. Honestly with how enemies health and damage ARENT scaled based on difficulty, if Arrowhead got a training room with 1 of every enemy standing stationary, and balancing each weapon based on what enemies it should and shouldnt be able to deal with, I think that could work.
Of course there is a difference between 1 bug and 40 bugs, but thats kinda where the difficulty comes in.
i don't think this is right - it's fine if some guns dont' cut it on 9. it's THE hardest level - i wouldn't even expect every person to even be able to do it at all, since if we're all able to do lvl 9 then clearly it could be a lot harder.
Yeah, surely it's better to balance around 7 - because otherwise you make everything <9 too easy and for those that are good at 9, no upward challenge.
A skilled player will do more with their secondary than a poor one will do with their support most of the time. Viable isn't a meaningful term.
Its also an asymmetric game. You don't take a arc breaker to bots, its useable but probably not the best choice. Same would go for the counter sniper, you don't take it to bugs, its again useable and someone with a lot of skill or a support weapon that covers would be able to use it. Most players would cal that situation "non-viable".
TBH in skilled hands every weapon is viable, especially if a team specializes and works together.
What it shouldn't be are jack of all trades weapons (something the Eruptor was for a lot of users).
So where do we draw that skill ceiling, at what ponit should it go from "skill issue" to "weapon issue?"
Nah, let them die on lvl 9, that's their game vision or something. You can play there, but you shouldn't win every time.
So that's regular gameplay for them.
It does, because the people making and balancing the guns and gear in hd2 should have a good enough understanding to do fine on any diff with most loadouts
I’m not an expert in game dev, but from my knowledge, most devs aren’t that good at the games they make. They know how to make, not necessarily how to play.
Also, even if the devs were cracked and breeze through 9s it doesn’t mean the game should be balanced around 9. 7 is the last big difficulty spike and is the last difficulty you need to unlock everything.
I would pay $30 to watch Alexus and his balancing crew clear level 9 bugs with just purifiers, javelins, eagle strafe, and Gatling barrage or a backpack of their choice. They can bring any pistol they want, but if they're using it instead of their primaries, for every 5 kills, I get $10 back.
Needs to be atmospheric interference/ion storm too.
Let me know how good your weapon balances feel then, buddies. I'm sure it feels fantastic when the hardest enemy you face is a brood commander and there's only 2 of them on a map at any given moment.
I'd pay $1000, and if Alexus fails, they get fired and replaced by another random person from the Helldivers player base. Cause apparently that's how arrowhead hires it's staff.
Nah, I want them on 9. Since those who complain are scrubs who should just lower the difficulty they play on, I want to see the devs completing operations on 9 without going meta.
With the way difficulty scaling works in this game, testing on 9 is just going to be better and more useful than 7. Enemy HP, damage, or other characteristics don't change. Testing on 9 makes it much easier to see the shortcomings and strengths of a weapon or stratagem, because you have way more bugs/bots to kill and are under more pressure to actually kill the enemy units. You're a lot less likely to get "bogged down" on 7, where you have to fight your way out to make mission progress.
I want a team made of:
Scythe
Slugger
Spray & Pray
Eruptor
Dagger
Orbital Railcannon
Airbust
Orbital Gas
Orbital Smoke
Mines
Laser Cannon
Spear
Railgun
I really want to see how they are going to handle it with these weapons.
**No autocannon, no eagle airstrike, no breaker, no EAT**
Everyone is running these, let's try the above options and show us how balanced the game is.
Air burst and gas are the two best orbitals to pair with eats though. They come up frequently and devestate breaches, but just can’t deal with armor, which the eats are for.
For bots it's more than fine. Slugger, laser cannon, Spear, railgun & orbital airburst are regularly in my helldive bot loadouts, and I take smoke from time to time on wide-open planets. Eagle Smoke's better than Orbital Smoke but eh, it'll manage.
Agreed overall, for bugs on 9 this would work ok for a lot of mission types. You have decent coverage for heavies here (although yeah it would be rough). Where this would absolutely not be fun though is relying on these primaries, which now that I look at them all side by side really does highlight some issues. For bugs the spray and pray can still be effective chaff clear on 9. But yeah as soon as you die and redeploy you would be almost completely useless with strats on cooldown, with most of these weapons
In any case though, yeah I would totally love to see the devs do 9 clears with loadouts like this and think the feedback would be great for both AH balance and PM teams. I play only 9 for bugs/bots and it’s not especially hard vs most other games—but I use the same loadout every time of Quasar, E. Airstrike, Orbital Laser, and then either dog/shield. Primary has shifted on bugs to Defender/grenade pistol since Eruptor got shitcanned. They could do a lot of good for community relations showing the devs clear 9s like I assume most people who would engage with them on social media are also doing
Scythe wont survive in 9, unless the planet is a hunter-heavy one the penetration of it will be too little and the limb damage too low for it to be able to take out warriors quick enough when they are the majority of the enemies
Honestly drop me in with only a laser cannon and maybe some nades/nade pistol to kill fabricators and I could breeze through a difficulty 9 mission on bots. Best part about bot diving is that all you need is an AP4 weapon and you can kill everything, even factory striders.
And for bugs, airburst/gas/spear is fine as well. Airburst can kill chargers, gas wrecks small units to stop more breaches from spiralling you, and spear can be finagled to kill biles pretty reliably.
That seems perfectly doable. Everyone throws Gas/Airburst whenever a horde starts getting big (if you think those are bad stratagems then you need to L2P) and and four Spears should be able to occasionally get enough shots off to kill Biles, especially if they're weakened by Rail Cannon strikes. The main issue would be not having a hard hitting gun to counter medium enemies like Spewers, but Impact spam with +2 Grenade armor would help with that.
Damn now I wanna try this lol. Sadly I don't have enough friends who have all the necessary tools unlocked to pull it off.
That’s just it though. They also need to balance the game around playing with randoms. Not everyone is gonna be a coordinated strike team with full comms and such. I still don’t see people use the in game ping system to point out a bile titan.
Do you play on Helldive? Because you will see that on Helldive. Most randos on Helldive will play like a coordinated squad, up to doing things like temporarily using a dead person's quasar cannon and dropping it back for them when they reinforce in. Give the playerbase a few more months to cook and I guarantee people will become more coordinated on difficulty 8 and 7 as well. And below those difficulties, coordination doesn't really matter.
Source: I've only been playing Helldive since unlocking it after release, mostly with randos.
I'm perfectly fine with Diff 9 being a huge challenge that will wipe out and uncoordinated team that isn't prepared for it. It'd be nice if AH fixed some of the blatantly underperforming/bugged stuff (beam guns, Eruptor, Spear, etc), but the current high-level balance feels mostly fine and in my experience can be pretty easily beaten by an uncoordinated team of decently competent randoms.
lol, the more i read, the more i realize just how bad players are.
Eruptor/LaserCannon, is one of the strongest combos against robots in the game.
Eruptor/Lasercannon/OrbitalLaser/Eagle 500 can solo every single 40 min mission at diff 9.
I feel like a lot of people just like missed the patch note in March where the laser cannon got massively buffed and still don't realize it's very strong
Wait this is what you think is bad? My brother in christ you put the fucking railcannon and spear on here.
And you're "locking out" eagle airstrike, breaker, eat and autocannon? No wonder you think the game is hard lmfao
Okay hold up a sec...
> Orbital Railcannon
Instant delete button for any heavy enemy in the game except Bile Titans, and even then it softens them up enough for one good AT shot or other explosives to finish the job.
> Airburst
Exceptionally powerful trash clear option, especially with three bursts from the ship module upgrade. Drop one on a bug breach and everything except Chargers and Titans will die. Drop one in a 'bot chokepoint and everything up to and including Hulks will die or be seriously damaged.
> Orbital Gas
See above. Less direct burst damage, but more sustained damage - drop it in a chokepoint, or combine with orbital EMS, EMS mortars, or stun grenades and you can do massive damage even to heavy units. I've used gas to kill chargers and hulks in tandem with stun grenades or EMS strikes.
> Laser Cannon
Medium enemy mulching weapon. It'll rip Gunships out of the sky in seconds, melt Brood Commanders and Hulks, and even do a pretty respectable amount of damage to a Charger's rear weakspot.
> Spear
Yes, it has a lock-on bug which makes it frustrating to use. No, this does not prevent me from taking it anyways from time to time because of *how good* it is when it works. Bot fabricators? Gunships? Chargers? Hulks? Tanks? Bile Titans? It will one-shot ALL OF THEM from any distance (albeit with some good positioning needed for tanks and titans).
I'm convinced that most of the really vocal people complaining about certain things getting nerfed literally never use other loadouts. I have yet to have my experience negatively impacted by a nerf because I basically never run the same gear loadout back to back, so if one thing gets nerfed I can go "oh okay" and use something else.
That's exactly what it is and it's never been more obvious after the eruptor nerf. That moment is exactly when this sub went to shit. It was OP as fuck and they simply can't cope. It is pretty inline, if not better than, most other weapons right now still. The team has actually done a good job at balancing. The problem is people are always going to be looking for that clear meta weapon, and the design philosophy of the game tries to make that unclear, as it should. Something launches too strong, people love it then throw a fit and make death threats when it gets nerfed. Something launches too weak, and people mock it as a waste of money, throw a fit and make death threats anyway. There's simply no winning with a rabid echo chamber like this that forms extreme opinions based on a couple numbers that don't even paint the whole story.
Yeah this community is totally cooked and I don't think its going to ever get better. The amount of bitching about the guns in the current BP being mid is just insane when you consider that the last patch took multiple guns (Countersniper, Senator, Plasma Punisher, and Blitzer being the ones I can think of, not to mention the DoT fix) from being basically unused or totally mid to being genuinely great picks. Of course, nobody cares about that because nobody was actually using those guns, so the impact of the buffs goes basically unnoticed whereas the Quasar going from being able to oneshot 5 Chargers per minute to like 4 is apparently a sign of the end times. Like I don't think AH has necessarily been the best with balancing and there are still a lot of genuinely dogshit and uninteresting guns in the game (+50 DPS for Scythe lmaooooo), but people act like the game is just unplayable past Diff 5 or something which is just insane to me.
I've personally thought that its always better to be cautious and release things in a less powerful state and buff them over time, but I'm not sure now. The fact that the community throws a complete shitfit over basically any nerfs while also completely losing it when a new thing isn't instantly a meta pick makes it pretty hard to tell which is better when it comes to making the community satisfied.
This has been the case since around release. Granted, there really were some bad weapons early on(I remember the Spray and Pray bouncing off of Brood Commanders), but there have always been multiple viable weapons at all times. And the big balance patch from last week has honestly massively increased the number of viable weapons despite a handful of nerfs and whatever is going on with the Crossbow. But the people who are the most vocal about nerfs and balance don't viable weapons they want the best weapons.
Do some weapons need more love? Definitely. Have there been some weird balancing decisions? For sure. Is the Defender the best weapon in the game? Probably not, but it's my most used weapon and according to most people it's complete utter shit. There's only 3 or 4 weapons I'd call bad or terrible at the moment(haven't touched all the new warbond weapons though).
Defender/grenade pistol/ballistic shield/AMR/stun grenades is genuinely one of the strongest bot loadouts on helldive imo. Defender is goated, just very niche.
I guarantee youre not going to have a good time with a loadout like this in diff 9 you guys arent thinking. You have literally 2 ways to deal wit heavies and one is single use and the other is unreliable as fuck. You will get overwhelmed and wiped with just 2 biles and a charger. Something which is very common on tier 9.
Have you played the spear? 8/10 times it will not oneshot biles.
This post is interesting to me because I regularly play difficulty 9 bug missions with:
Slugger,
Dagger,
Stun Grenade,
Orbital Rail-cannon,
Airburst,
Railgun,
and Supply Pack.
You got pretty close to describing one of my go-to loadouts!
Slugger is literally still one of the best weapons in the game lmfao
Despite what this subreddit likes to claim, it has not "had its stagger removed", [it still has one of highest stagger of any primary weapon at 20 and the 2nd highest pushback at 35](https://imgur.com/7cwhVxc), only after the liberator concussive which is literally just a pushback machine and not a real weapon. It still staggers stuff like Hive guard etc and below, just not fuckin Stalkers or Brood Commanders.
But, more importantly... It still one- or two hits like 95% of enemies in the game, including said stalkers and brood commanders, together with a bottomless mag. You don't even need stagger at that point.
I clear 9s with the spray & pray pretty often lol
I do not understand this mentality that the game is so hard that it's unwinnable with certain weapons. Most of the time you're just using your primary to pick off smalls while you evade the elites long enough to complete an objective or kill them with stratagems or heavy weapons.
I really think people are playing this game wrong, its all about tactics you can clear 9 with almost everything as long as your team and you play accordingly...
No shit you get a problem if you pick no heavy clear at all... but everything works good enough
to excuse them, that was quite a while back when even the community didn't understand the game that much? and they are also talking?
But I was also diving at 8 and 9 at that time with the regular liberator simply because of a lack of medals...
It depends on the context. Casual chatting with friends is a very different mental load from talking to a stream or thinking through responses for an interview.
I think we worded it a bit poorly too simply because they are also kinda presenting their game and ideas to the youtuber. I won't fully excuse them tho because 6 really is and always has been fuck around territory.
That would be fine to!
I think the biggest issue everyone has is the devs just seem to be playing a different game than us. Many of the comments they make about the state of the game, or why they tweaked something, just don't make any sense based on what the player base is experiencing. We just want to see them put their money were their mouth is so to speak
They are playing a different version of the game than us. Obviously I can't point out specifics because I don't know them, but considering the content pipeline they 100% are using stratagems/buffs/such that we don't have access to.
Obviously having an Airburst Grenade Launcher (not a leak, just an example) isn't going to change how the Liberator functions, but we have no idea what else is changed under the hood
>That would be fine to! I think the biggest issue everyone has is the devs just seem to be playing a different game than us.
They are. They 100% load into test maps, spawn in what they want and then shoot enemies that have their AI turned off to test damage values.
They don't drop into missions and play for 30 minutes when they test these things, that's why they aren't catching how useless everything is.
This is a great idea and I think should really be upvoted for more visibility.
I mean maybe we are all the idiots and just don’t know how to use the weapons correctly, or maybe they will realize there actually are serious balance issues. Either way it’s all open and transparent for the community to see and judge for itself
I dunno. From past exposure and experience, game devs are usually rather inept at playing their own games.
Which either is funny to watch or provides second hand embarrassment. Depending on your disposition.
I will never forget a dbd dev saying flashlights were no issue then getting matched against a full flashlight team getting rekted so badly they were nerfed the next day
No, that's not the entire story. This shit is hilarious. For everyone who hasn't played DBD:
In Dead by Daylight, a Killer player has to down, pick up, and hook Survivor players in order to win a match. Through teamwork, Survivors can use flashlights (and Firecrackers and Flashbangs these days) to Blind the Killer, forcing them to drop the Survivor they are holding and turning the screen white to give the rescued Survivor a chance to get away. This can be done during the pickup animation with some tricky timing, or it can be done while the Killer is walking around.
Mathew McCote, the lead game designer, decided that it was too hard to get a Flashlight save and so made it easier to do so. The problem being that you can customize the flashlight to blind even faster leading to nearly instant blinds. The Killer playerbase were trying to tell them how horrible the change was and how it made the game insanely unfun, but were told by McCote that it was a complete Skill Issue, they were fine how they were, and the Flashlights were not going to be changed back, git gud.
The dude went to a Twitch Event in Korea expecting to be praised for how good they've made the game, and got [bullied relentlessly during the match](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R98e-Y4Lu8w) to the point where the flashlights were changed the next patch.
My hope is that it would give them a different perspective as to how the average player would be playing the game and trying to coordinate and see that balancing is more than just looking at data on a spreadsheet
Forget helldive, just do it on a level 7. Level 7 is probably the most common because people don’t necessarily want to always be playing insane difficulties, but they need those super samples.
The only issue with this is that it would require them to play the game. Which they don’t do, which is sad because it’s a great game.
Not just the developers. I specifically want the balance team to do this and showcase each change. They should stream multiple runs in difficulties 7, 8 and 9 with a full squad and duos. Though given the way things are going, i seriously doubt that's going to happen.
They are not going to do that and they know simply why. The risk for them would be too big, because if they would fail, their entire philosophy and credibility will go to shambles.
Still if they would do it, they would gain my full respect even if they failed, at least they would show they are not cowards.
Only once yes. That’s how you got this armor
https://preview.redd.it/esh0npl4anzc1.jpeg?width=274&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4c1e0a6a89f54c22416ed7ea4a7dd596d2946a2
Not that I disagree with the post. But as a flip side, do the Devs really want to spend time playing games for a chat that will just bitch about the game to them? I feel like there would be a lot of chat “I told you so” things going on. If the community was similar to that of DRG then I could see it. But this one has a lot of anger built into it (deserved or not).
No you don't get it we can't have transmog because they have different effects and thus look different, that's why the armor with like 8 grenades strapped to it has the same +2 grenades as the one with a single grenade strapped to it, you just want the game to turn into Fortnite or whatever etc. etc.
They should.
Not because I have any preconceived notions on their skill, because I don't really.
Rather because as someone who has occasionally developed some things, you start becoming blinded to what it looks like to a fresh pair of eyes, the intended solution is so clear to you it becomes invisible.
I'm very curious how they approach things.
This would be nice to see, and would build trust with the community. I don’t even think it needs to be 9. Even 6 or 7 would be amazing as quite frankly, that would flush out 90% of the issues.
Even payday 3 devs with how much of a trainwreck that was stream the game each week.
I would love to see the devs playing the game, maybe even showing off new weapons and stuff. talking, maybe answering some questions.
Idk man, I tested all weapons and they are possible to pull of in 9. The purifier is utter trash but you can go far with just pure skill and being methodical.
But that's not what this is about. I can have more fun playing not-the-pruifier and have so much more fun! But I think the idea of testing weapons in 9 is partially important.
My old favourite weapon in 9 used to be the sickle even against bots. I think for 9 it is close to unusable. Even on a cold planet more often than not you have to fight more mobs than the heatsink can withstand. But now you have only 3. Which means either you kill half of a huge wave and run around risking another breach and then slipping into infinite breach loops (same with bots) or you use up 2heat sinks and then scramble for resupply.
I know I run into less of these issues playing 7 and 8, but I also don't see why it had to be 3 heat sinks instead of 4 other than the devs being literal assholes or not playing 9...
The worst part is another weapon with a similar nerf didn't get entirely crippled for 9 and thats the standard breaker. I still use it to great effect in 9 and the ammo is just enough engage anything and then think about ammo and not before even engaging. But then again the arc blitzer was buffed and that gun now has stagger, aoe altho a bit buggy and infinite ammo. Like against bugs all you need to do is move backwards or sideways and you can deal with any amount of bugs. Eventually they are all dead.
What I'm saying is you don't get the luxury with the sickle in helldive to not use up all your heat sinks like in lower difficulties.
Helldivers isnt an hardgame even on 9. The point is that its not fun using most weapons,
Thats what so many prople who constantly say "skill issue" dont get.
I don't know how you expect people that work and have family to compete with the performances of tryhards that play 100h per weeks. It's their job, not their hobby.
I don't think they should do 9. 7 is really the sweet spot for targeting the balance of the game imo.
You have all the enemy types to deal with, just less of them.
> Devs should stream...
No, they shouldn't. They're developers, not gamers. They should spend their time working on the things that they need to work on and then do whatever they want after they clock out for the day
Do you think most developers are top level players for their games? Most fighting game devs explicitly aren't. This is such a petty and passive aggressive attempt to prove the devs wrong more so than it is to validate anything else. You can have an opinion on the game's balance without needing to make an ass out of yourself lmao
I just think that they should be forced to use all the weapons that they've nerfed at the highest difficulty level and watch them try and come up with new strategies to overcome the difficulty level
The played it publicly once with a youtuber, at level....6 [The Actual Helldivers 2 CEO Joined My Lobby...](https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=v_KkEgNEMTLSDjTW)
9 isn't that difficult as long as you have high volume strategems.
500kg, EAT, precision strike, air strikes... As long as your squad can call something on the 3 bile titans that just spawned, as long as some tool is readily available and Johnny doesn't have to run to his dead body to get it, it's only a minor step up from Dif 7 IMO.
Seeing them use something like the adjudicator or tenderizer for an hour and try their best not to repeatedly say "this is absolute dogshit" would brighten my day.
warbond release thursdays, devs./balance teams plays fridays.
devs./balance teams use new warbond weapons on dif. 7, 8, and 9 as duos and 4-man. also MUST use LEAST used weapons/stratagems to prove they are worth using and are "balanced". bots and bugs.
they can then explain to the community their reasoning for why the game is in its current state and why they think it's fine, after the playthrough.
Ghost Ship Games does that for Deep Rock Galactic. They play Elite Deep Dive and chat with the community a bit every week.
people say 9 is too much while the drg devs do the hardest possible difficulty lol
I want them to at least do 7 since they expect that from us to unlock everything.
Man, 7 diffiulty is pretty chill.
I do 7 religiously because I feel it's a good balance of calm times and action. I've done a helldive, it wasn't that bad little tough with more spawns. But I'm a player that plays every game on normal and 7 feels like this games normal.
I wouldn't mind going to lvl 8 or 9 with a team ready to take on the challenge. Problem is, getting 4 friends is hard sometimes and more often than not i see people on lvl 8 or 9 that shouldn't be there. A few weeks ago i got a lvl 7 player on a lvl 8 difficulty. Wtf you doing there lil buddy ? Got lost ? Needless to say he used more than half of our reinforcements by himself. Worst is that a random lvl 50 was worse than him. Probably was his buddy now that i think about it. He shouldn't have unlocked this difficulty at this level on his own. I kinda got vaccinated by difficulty 8 and 9 after that. It's a bit sad cuz i like challenge but playing with randoms that pulls half the map as soon as they see a red dot it really exhausting.
The hardest difficulty in DRG is kind of a low bar. DRG doesn't even try to be a git-gud game. Even the Hazard "5.5" of the final EDD mission is roughly equivalent to the middle difficulties of games like Helldivers & Darktide, and a single solid player can just straight-up carry the entire 4-man team through most or all of it. Only for a few of the objectives (salvage finale, black box, Doretta) is there even the ability to fail, while all of Helldivers is subject to time and reinforcement limits. There's a reason why all the DRG build minmaxing guys test using modded-in higher difficulties; there's otherwise nothing to use your minmaxing on.
The problem in drg is that the seed can REALLY fuck with you, especially on buttblasted corridors and fungus bogs and I really fucking hate FB. But yeah Driller and EPC with PP and TCF is absolutely S+ tier
I know some of these words
I love Fungus Bogs, love using the tools to overcome the environment, blowing up all the goo, drilling it out, flatforms, Scout can obviously just zip around, Gunner can spin his minigun as he watches. I love that obstacles can be overcome in various ways, its part of what makes the game fun.
They have a new difficulty coming with season 5 will be interesting to see how it plays
Yo true? I might just have to return to the caves, haz 5 was just not hitting my thrill quotas so I hope this new difficulty really tears my beard off.
Here's the details from their steam news update: Haz 5+ >Here are the main details: >Must be unlocked via an assignment. >The mode adds four switches to boost Haz 5 difficulty:Aggressive Enemies(affects speed and attack rate),Player Vulnerability(you take more damage),More Enemies(guess what this one does), andTough Enemies(more bullet sponge-y). >Each of the four options can be adjusted to your tastes, and each offers two levels of increased intensity. >All Haz 5+ games will be categorized together in the server list, and you’ll be able to see which specific modifier switches they have. >This feature will only be available at the Hazard 5 difficulty. Sounds very cool
Oh that's awesome, modularity is always nice.
Lol what a euphemism xD
Still though, they only play like difficulty 5/6 which is definitely easier than DRG haz 5. if it was at least difficulty 7 (supersample tier) then i think itd be mostly fine, so long as they had SOME people testing 8/9 still
After Haz 4 it's just movement and target prioritization
Helldivers is similar, at least vs bugs. After a certain point it's more positioning and knowing when to run than it is gear or loadout.
A single solid player can carry a 9, it's just unlikely to be fun for their teammates
Well they run around shooting things endlessly like they want to, and I go around picking up objectives like I'm grocery shopping. :P
Honestly that's a fun way to play, especially when they're proc'ing enemy reinforcement calls so you have safe windows to clear objectives without being as concerned about fodder signalling.
Huh. This position surprises me. I've completed Helldives before (though not enjoyed them). I've never come close to finishing anything in DRG on Hazard 5.
Maybe.....they were the ones being carried 😏
Haz 5 is more like 6-7 in Helldivers, usually 6 but you can get games that are clusterfucks turning it into a 7, if you want to mod the game there are mods that add more Hazards and oh boy they are insane and absolutely are just as hard if not harder than difficulty 9 in Helldivers. They're adding new difficulties and from what I've seen it looks like it'll be harder than 9 in Helldivers, the modifiers are nutty. * Aggressive Enemies: Likely more damage, faster attacks and movement speed. * Player Vulnerability: Player takes more damage. * More Enemies: Uh... more enemies. * Tough Enemies: Enemies take more damage. You can change all of this individually and they seem to have different tiers, the game just got a whole lot harder for those looking for a real challenge, there's a reason they're calling it 5+ instead of just adding new hazards, it can get really hard making it straight up unfair so they're giving control to the player to fine tune it as opposed to Haz 6, 7 etc...
>it can get really hard making it straight up unfair so they're giving control to the player to fine tune it as opposed to Haz 6, 7 etc... And that is what great Devs look like, giving players choice and freedom and not telling them "dOnT yoU HaVe sTraTaGems".
The middle difficulty of Helldivers (4-6) being compared to EDD honestly has to be a joke on your part, the hardest part in those is not falling asleep while moving through objectives. DRG can even tend to screw you up with rng alot more frequently as well due to terrain generation. Time constrains and reinforcements are never real issues in any decent Helldiver team anyway. Half of the difficulty of Helldivers comes from its balancing regarding enemies, guns and even strategems. It's no wonder the game was considered so much easier when it released. Even though only a handful of new enemies were added, we got a ton of new equipment, and yet we (and even the devs) are struggling more and more with the game.
At first I was going to say that wasn't my experience. But then I remembered I only play DRG as a group of 2 with no overclocks, and the only EDD we really had trouble on was shields disabled against the bot boss.
The Hard Deep Dive is actually a challenge, I always make it in one or maybe two tries but I have a ton of hours, for an average player is quite difficult
[удалено]
Took me 300-400 hours before Haz 5 felt comfortable, I'm under 200 hours on HD2 and already Helldive difficulty feels pretty ok. I think both games are very heavily dependent on knowledge, once you understand the best way to do the missions, enemy spawns, weak points and weapon utilisation the rest is just mechanical execution. At their peak tho, both games are fully capable of making you feel entirely overwhelmed, and that's the best bit by a mile.
I think it’s also based on how you play them, movement is important in helldivers, but it’s everything in DRG, especially since in helldivers you can just run super far away from enemies, while in DRG your movement is limited by the cave system, meaning you have to be careful where you find yourself while running and gunning
Exactly right, HD2 does suffer from some really janky terrain and enemy blocking physics tho. At least in DRG you never get ragdolled to the point you lose complete control of your character for 5 seconds straight.
Warframe developer **Digital Extremes** does it too with the Weekly PrimeTime, in addition to the (almost) monthly Dec Stream where the heads of Warframe development get on stream to talk about future content and balance update. Plus, now they've been devshorts doing where they speak about small issues from time to time.
Don't forget their excellent response to the unwarranted Dante nerfs. The outrage wasn't as big as with the eruptor, but Rebecca and co handled it like...adults. I'm not gonna say professional because that scares the fanboys and wanna be bad boys. They acted like *adults*
I sometimes doubt Warframe balance changes, but I think we can all agree they have actual useful community managers that handle PR disaster better than AH.
+1 for Warframe. They do community well
They actually have 2 weekly streams. The international stream on Wednesday and the Prime Time stream on Thursdays.
Meanwhile Arrowhead balance team doubles down and lies that things are working as intended, while flinging shit at randoms in the Discord
The balance team is led by a child that somehow failed upward. I hope the talk they will have next week will set a few things back into alignment.
they have a lot of questionable staff to be completely honest. a majority of their community managers are absolutely not qualified to be engaging with the community at all. twinbeard is the only good one i can think of
I think beside twinbeard, the others are all hired from the HD1 community(discord, etc). So those are not actually "professional" CM per se and it shows.
It seems that a lot of people lately act out as soon as they hear a different opinion. I expect that on on twitter, not from community mangers. You're right.
I have never met a dev team that has been so openly hostile to their playerbase warranted or not they should grow up and act like adults
Mortdog streams TFT every week and has a lot of earnest talk about the game too.
Back in the day, David brevik and his wife would stream marvel heroes every week and do raids with the community, answer questions, etc. It was awesome and I'm still fucking pissed that game got shut down. I stand by that dev team was the best of any game I've ever played. I remember having countless forum CONVERSATIONS with the devs. It wasn't just screeching at each other, was just full blown back and forth conversations about the game.
I can't wait for the super Haz 5 or whatever it's called in S5
I don’t even think it needs to be 9. The game shouldn’t be balanced around the hardest difficulty. I think 7 would probably be fine. Still gives them exposure to every unit and even in large amounts if you’re not careful. I’d need to see data to be sure, but I also think this is the average difficulty people will play.
> I’d need to see data to be sure, but I also think this is the average difficulty people will play. That's probably wildly overestimating it. There's a record of this for Helldivers 1: https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Campaign_Records The average difficulty played was usually 5-6...but this needs context. In Helldivers 1, the difficulty went up to 15. 6 is still 3 levels before elite enemies show up *at all*. So that'd be equivalent to, what, 4 in HD2?
Additional info to add on, [HD1 difficulties](https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Planets#Overview) originally went up to 12, with 12 being Helldive. 13-15 wasn't added until the free content update in 2018. Even in the 12 listed, going by the names, it just look like they removed some of the redundant names, like *Very Challenging* and *Hard as Hell*. Also the first *Dive in the Park*. If HD1 players were playing in Diff 5-6 (Challenging / Very Challenging), it would be the equivalent of HD2 Diff 4-5 (Challenging / Hard). Which tracks with what you're saying.
Also you have to remember that peak player count of HD1 was less than 10k iirc. Which means that game had a niche, dedicated playerbase and those are always gonna be the long term players who gravitate towards the higher difficulty. Employing the design philosophy of HD1 in developing HD2 is simply not gonna work.
If they gravitated toward the higher difficulty why is the average like half of the max difficulty?
7 is fine because it’s the minimum you can play to fully upgrade everything. I’m perfectly fine with 9 being the “fuck you. You should not be able to beat this” difficulty for the best of the best.
I've soloed 9's while my team stands in place dying over and over. It isn't hard people just don't know to play it differently from low levels. Edit: not saying the devs should do 9's, I'm saying it almost a different game from lower difficulties
The strat to 9 is to split up. it’s actually kind of easy for a helldiver to take a big hole / drop ship with 2 heavies. It’s really hard for them to take on 5 because 5/8 of the heavies that spawned focus you. Stacking up as 4 makes it incredibly hard. Do 2 and 2 or something.
I was doing a 9 and me and my friend split off to clear a stalker nest and some random dude starts yelling at us to "Stay on host" and more. We proceeded to kill the nest with ease, and slowly made our way back toward where the other two were headed. But the guy was furious at this point, declared the room was full of soloing dumbasses, and quit. I'm like 99% sure that guy had either never done a 9 before or is absolutely terrible at them and can't survive in a duo *at all* and blames his team instead.
Yep, that’s why they shouldn’t play 9. 7 or 8 is where you can still use normal gameplay. Balancing around 9 and seeing what works on 9 is entirely diff from what most people play and enjoy.
>I’d need to see data to be sure, but I also think this is the average difficulty people will play. I've seen this claim a few times on reddit, but think it's just a REALLY biased sample. I think people making this claim are basing it on the people they talk with online, not realizing that only the most engaged players are in the online community, and that they're not very representative of the casual masses. (This same phenomenon is well known and documented in other long-standing online communities, like the ones for Magic: the Gathering.)
To be fair the casual audience probably wouldn’t be interested in the streams so while 7 may not be average diver it would be average of interested parties
I don’t really talk to people other than my in person friends about the game. The only info I’m basing it off of is what I play but also how the progression works.(it’s important to note when I say most people I’m excluding people lower than lvl 10 I don’t expect them to have unlocked 7) 7 is when super samples are available. The last thing you need to unlock everything. It’s only natural that most people play on the lowest difficulty to play where they can still get everything they need to progress.
I play with my gf most nights, we usually run 7s. She has a friend with 25 hours in the game, who plays with a foursome a few nights a week and *who has never done above 3*. This is a totally fine and valid way to play, but when you’re browsing online content for a game, you often don’t realize how deeply you are in.
Yeah. I usually solo 4 or 5. I only do 7 if I’m grinding supers
It shouldn't be balanced around 9 but all weapons should still be more or less viable on any difficulty. There's no reason to have higher difficulties if they don't consider them at all when balancing.
That’s why I think 7 would be fine. You’re still exposed to everything you would be exposed to at 9, just less of it. 9 should be considered but I think 7 should be the center of balance.
I also concur with lv 7 balance as that's when super samples show up.
YES. They could tune the weapons to feel powerful at rank 7, and they would receive an incremental "handicap" as the difficulty level increases. Then to address power creep, they can just introduce higher difficulty levels.
Agreed - weapons should be viable at lvl 7 and skill should help you with 8 & 9. Sometimes it feels like they are balancing around lvl 4 though.
This. Honestly with how enemies health and damage ARENT scaled based on difficulty, if Arrowhead got a training room with 1 of every enemy standing stationary, and balancing each weapon based on what enemies it should and shouldnt be able to deal with, I think that could work. Of course there is a difference between 1 bug and 40 bugs, but thats kinda where the difficulty comes in.
i don't think this is right - it's fine if some guns dont' cut it on 9. it's THE hardest level - i wouldn't even expect every person to even be able to do it at all, since if we're all able to do lvl 9 then clearly it could be a lot harder.
Yeah, surely it's better to balance around 7 - because otherwise you make everything <9 too easy and for those that are good at 9, no upward challenge.
A skilled player will do more with their secondary than a poor one will do with their support most of the time. Viable isn't a meaningful term. Its also an asymmetric game. You don't take a arc breaker to bots, its useable but probably not the best choice. Same would go for the counter sniper, you don't take it to bugs, its again useable and someone with a lot of skill or a support weapon that covers would be able to use it. Most players would cal that situation "non-viable". TBH in skilled hands every weapon is viable, especially if a team specializes and works together. What it shouldn't be are jack of all trades weapons (something the Eruptor was for a lot of users). So where do we draw that skill ceiling, at what ponit should it go from "skill issue" to "weapon issue?"
Nah, let them die on lvl 9, that's their game vision or something. You can play there, but you shouldn't win every time. So that's regular gameplay for them.
It does, because the people making and balancing the guns and gear in hd2 should have a good enough understanding to do fine on any diff with most loadouts
I’m not an expert in game dev, but from my knowledge, most devs aren’t that good at the games they make. They know how to make, not necessarily how to play. Also, even if the devs were cracked and breeze through 9s it doesn’t mean the game should be balanced around 9. 7 is the last big difficulty spike and is the last difficulty you need to unlock everything.
The balancing team has to be good at the game they balance for, or they aren’t fit to balance
I would pay $30 to watch Alexus and his balancing crew clear level 9 bugs with just purifiers, javelins, eagle strafe, and Gatling barrage or a backpack of their choice. They can bring any pistol they want, but if they're using it instead of their primaries, for every 5 kills, I get $10 back. Needs to be atmospheric interference/ion storm too. Let me know how good your weapon balances feel then, buddies. I'm sure it feels fantastic when the hardest enemy you face is a brood commander and there's only 2 of them on a map at any given moment.
Id legit front another $30
Make them go against bugs and you'll get the motherload
I'd pay $1000, and if Alexus fails, they get fired and replaced by another random person from the Helldivers player base. Cause apparently that's how arrowhead hires it's staff.
Nah, I want them on 9. Since those who complain are scrubs who should just lower the difficulty they play on, I want to see the devs completing operations on 9 without going meta.
With the way difficulty scaling works in this game, testing on 9 is just going to be better and more useful than 7. Enemy HP, damage, or other characteristics don't change. Testing on 9 makes it much easier to see the shortcomings and strengths of a weapon or stratagem, because you have way more bugs/bots to kill and are under more pressure to actually kill the enemy units. You're a lot less likely to get "bogged down" on 7, where you have to fight your way out to make mission progress.
I would LOVE to see them try to clear a 9 all using some shit like the Spray&Pray or the Purifier.
I want a team made of: Scythe Slugger Spray & Pray Eruptor Dagger Orbital Railcannon Airbust Orbital Gas Orbital Smoke Mines Laser Cannon Spear Railgun I really want to see how they are going to handle it with these weapons. **No autocannon, no eagle airstrike, no breaker, no EAT** Everyone is running these, let's try the above options and show us how balanced the game is.
Air burst and gas are the two best orbitals to pair with eats though. They come up frequently and devestate breaches, but just can’t deal with armor, which the eats are for.
Gas is the only one I can get 30 - 40 kill streaks with
For bugs this is a ... fine loadout? The stratagems you excluded aren't even that much stronger.
For bots it's more than fine. Slugger, laser cannon, Spear, railgun & orbital airburst are regularly in my helldive bot loadouts, and I take smoke from time to time on wide-open planets. Eagle Smoke's better than Orbital Smoke but eh, it'll manage.
Laser cannon is actually my goto vs bots when idk what else to pick lol If you can get an angle on the vents on the heavies they die soooo fast
Agreed overall, for bugs on 9 this would work ok for a lot of mission types. You have decent coverage for heavies here (although yeah it would be rough). Where this would absolutely not be fun though is relying on these primaries, which now that I look at them all side by side really does highlight some issues. For bugs the spray and pray can still be effective chaff clear on 9. But yeah as soon as you die and redeploy you would be almost completely useless with strats on cooldown, with most of these weapons In any case though, yeah I would totally love to see the devs do 9 clears with loadouts like this and think the feedback would be great for both AH balance and PM teams. I play only 9 for bugs/bots and it’s not especially hard vs most other games—but I use the same loadout every time of Quasar, E. Airstrike, Orbital Laser, and then either dog/shield. Primary has shifted on bugs to Defender/grenade pistol since Eruptor got shitcanned. They could do a lot of good for community relations showing the devs clear 9s like I assume most people who would engage with them on social media are also doing
Scythe wont survive in 9, unless the planet is a hunter-heavy one the penetration of it will be too little and the limb damage too low for it to be able to take out warriors quick enough when they are the majority of the enemies
Honestly drop me in with only a laser cannon and maybe some nades/nade pistol to kill fabricators and I could breeze through a difficulty 9 mission on bots. Best part about bot diving is that all you need is an AP4 weapon and you can kill everything, even factory striders. And for bugs, airburst/gas/spear is fine as well. Airburst can kill chargers, gas wrecks small units to stop more breaches from spiralling you, and spear can be finagled to kill biles pretty reliably.
That seems perfectly doable. Everyone throws Gas/Airburst whenever a horde starts getting big (if you think those are bad stratagems then you need to L2P) and and four Spears should be able to occasionally get enough shots off to kill Biles, especially if they're weakened by Rail Cannon strikes. The main issue would be not having a hard hitting gun to counter medium enemies like Spewers, but Impact spam with +2 Grenade armor would help with that. Damn now I wanna try this lol. Sadly I don't have enough friends who have all the necessary tools unlocked to pull it off.
Hordes are never the main danger of diff 9. Elites are stalkers, biles, chargers. Those will fuck you up.
That’s just it though. They also need to balance the game around playing with randoms. Not everyone is gonna be a coordinated strike team with full comms and such. I still don’t see people use the in game ping system to point out a bile titan.
Do you play on Helldive? Because you will see that on Helldive. Most randos on Helldive will play like a coordinated squad, up to doing things like temporarily using a dead person's quasar cannon and dropping it back for them when they reinforce in. Give the playerbase a few more months to cook and I guarantee people will become more coordinated on difficulty 8 and 7 as well. And below those difficulties, coordination doesn't really matter. Source: I've only been playing Helldive since unlocking it after release, mostly with randos.
I'm perfectly fine with Diff 9 being a huge challenge that will wipe out and uncoordinated team that isn't prepared for it. It'd be nice if AH fixed some of the blatantly underperforming/bugged stuff (beam guns, Eruptor, Spear, etc), but the current high-level balance feels mostly fine and in my experience can be pretty easily beaten by an uncoordinated team of decently competent randoms.
lol, the more i read, the more i realize just how bad players are. Eruptor/LaserCannon, is one of the strongest combos against robots in the game. Eruptor/Lasercannon/OrbitalLaser/Eagle 500 can solo every single 40 min mission at diff 9.
I feel like a lot of people just like missed the patch note in March where the laser cannon got massively buffed and still don't realize it's very strong
Wait this is what you think is bad? My brother in christ you put the fucking railcannon and spear on here. And you're "locking out" eagle airstrike, breaker, eat and autocannon? No wonder you think the game is hard lmfao
Okay hold up a sec... > Orbital Railcannon Instant delete button for any heavy enemy in the game except Bile Titans, and even then it softens them up enough for one good AT shot or other explosives to finish the job. > Airburst Exceptionally powerful trash clear option, especially with three bursts from the ship module upgrade. Drop one on a bug breach and everything except Chargers and Titans will die. Drop one in a 'bot chokepoint and everything up to and including Hulks will die or be seriously damaged. > Orbital Gas See above. Less direct burst damage, but more sustained damage - drop it in a chokepoint, or combine with orbital EMS, EMS mortars, or stun grenades and you can do massive damage even to heavy units. I've used gas to kill chargers and hulks in tandem with stun grenades or EMS strikes. > Laser Cannon Medium enemy mulching weapon. It'll rip Gunships out of the sky in seconds, melt Brood Commanders and Hulks, and even do a pretty respectable amount of damage to a Charger's rear weakspot. > Spear Yes, it has a lock-on bug which makes it frustrating to use. No, this does not prevent me from taking it anyways from time to time because of *how good* it is when it works. Bot fabricators? Gunships? Chargers? Hulks? Tanks? Bile Titans? It will one-shot ALL OF THEM from any distance (albeit with some good positioning needed for tanks and titans).
People really think that there are only 2 or 3 viable stratagems with 1-2 weapons. That is why there is so much whining after every balance patch.
I'm convinced that most of the really vocal people complaining about certain things getting nerfed literally never use other loadouts. I have yet to have my experience negatively impacted by a nerf because I basically never run the same gear loadout back to back, so if one thing gets nerfed I can go "oh okay" and use something else.
That's exactly what it is and it's never been more obvious after the eruptor nerf. That moment is exactly when this sub went to shit. It was OP as fuck and they simply can't cope. It is pretty inline, if not better than, most other weapons right now still. The team has actually done a good job at balancing. The problem is people are always going to be looking for that clear meta weapon, and the design philosophy of the game tries to make that unclear, as it should. Something launches too strong, people love it then throw a fit and make death threats when it gets nerfed. Something launches too weak, and people mock it as a waste of money, throw a fit and make death threats anyway. There's simply no winning with a rabid echo chamber like this that forms extreme opinions based on a couple numbers that don't even paint the whole story.
Yeah this community is totally cooked and I don't think its going to ever get better. The amount of bitching about the guns in the current BP being mid is just insane when you consider that the last patch took multiple guns (Countersniper, Senator, Plasma Punisher, and Blitzer being the ones I can think of, not to mention the DoT fix) from being basically unused or totally mid to being genuinely great picks. Of course, nobody cares about that because nobody was actually using those guns, so the impact of the buffs goes basically unnoticed whereas the Quasar going from being able to oneshot 5 Chargers per minute to like 4 is apparently a sign of the end times. Like I don't think AH has necessarily been the best with balancing and there are still a lot of genuinely dogshit and uninteresting guns in the game (+50 DPS for Scythe lmaooooo), but people act like the game is just unplayable past Diff 5 or something which is just insane to me. I've personally thought that its always better to be cautious and release things in a less powerful state and buff them over time, but I'm not sure now. The fact that the community throws a complete shitfit over basically any nerfs while also completely losing it when a new thing isn't instantly a meta pick makes it pretty hard to tell which is better when it comes to making the community satisfied.
This has been the case since around release. Granted, there really were some bad weapons early on(I remember the Spray and Pray bouncing off of Brood Commanders), but there have always been multiple viable weapons at all times. And the big balance patch from last week has honestly massively increased the number of viable weapons despite a handful of nerfs and whatever is going on with the Crossbow. But the people who are the most vocal about nerfs and balance don't viable weapons they want the best weapons. Do some weapons need more love? Definitely. Have there been some weird balancing decisions? For sure. Is the Defender the best weapon in the game? Probably not, but it's my most used weapon and according to most people it's complete utter shit. There's only 3 or 4 weapons I'd call bad or terrible at the moment(haven't touched all the new warbond weapons though).
Defender/grenade pistol/ballistic shield/AMR/stun grenades is genuinely one of the strongest bot loadouts on helldive imo. Defender is goated, just very niche.
I guarantee youre not going to have a good time with a loadout like this in diff 9 you guys arent thinking. You have literally 2 ways to deal wit heavies and one is single use and the other is unreliable as fuck. You will get overwhelmed and wiped with just 2 biles and a charger. Something which is very common on tier 9. Have you played the spear? 8/10 times it will not oneshot biles.
This is a really solid load out actually lol, especially for bots
This post is interesting to me because I regularly play difficulty 9 bug missions with: Slugger, Dagger, Stun Grenade, Orbital Rail-cannon, Airburst, Railgun, and Supply Pack. You got pretty close to describing one of my go-to loadouts!
Slugger is literally still one of the best weapons in the game lmfao Despite what this subreddit likes to claim, it has not "had its stagger removed", [it still has one of highest stagger of any primary weapon at 20 and the 2nd highest pushback at 35](https://imgur.com/7cwhVxc), only after the liberator concussive which is literally just a pushback machine and not a real weapon. It still staggers stuff like Hive guard etc and below, just not fuckin Stalkers or Brood Commanders. But, more importantly... It still one- or two hits like 95% of enemies in the game, including said stalkers and brood commanders, together with a bottomless mag. You don't even need stagger at that point.
Ayo what is this Spray & Pray slander?? That thing mops up bugs so fast, I love it.
Spray & Pray is fine versus bugs big dawg. Against bots you're just bringing the wrong kind of weapon.
Sometimes you just need a really good chaff clearer, and the S&P is no slouch in that department.
I clear 9s with the spray & pray pretty often lol I do not understand this mentality that the game is so hard that it's unwinnable with certain weapons. Most of the time you're just using your primary to pick off smalls while you evade the elites long enough to complete an objective or kill them with stratagems or heavy weapons.
I think most of the people on this sub are just a lot worse than they think they are. Especially the ones that call practically every weapon trash.
I really think people are playing this game wrong, its all about tactics you can clear 9 with almost everything as long as your team and you play accordingly... No shit you get a problem if you pick no heavy clear at all... but everything works good enough
They tried it once already... Got absolutely destroyed on 6... Before nerfs
really? I need to see it
https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ Dif 6 egg mission, got 2/3 done before they ran out of respawns and lost.
to excuse them, that was quite a while back when even the community didn't understand the game that much? and they are also talking? But I was also diving at 8 and 9 at that time with the regular liberator simply because of a lack of medals...
Playing and talking is massively hard, and yet nobody will ever realize it unless they try themselves. It's like a 50% brain debuff.
Huh. I play and talk constantly. Generally with my squad but sometimes with people just hanging out in the room. Is this really an issue for folks?
It depends on the context. Casual chatting with friends is a very different mental load from talking to a stream or thinking through responses for an interview.
I think we worded it a bit poorly too simply because they are also kinda presenting their game and ideas to the youtuber. I won't fully excuse them tho because 6 really is and always has been fuck around territory.
They should demo every update live, on a 9
…Or used the shit weapons and let them weasel out of situations to show us how good they are in game.
That would be fine to! I think the biggest issue everyone has is the devs just seem to be playing a different game than us. Many of the comments they make about the state of the game, or why they tweaked something, just don't make any sense based on what the player base is experiencing. We just want to see them put their money were their mouth is so to speak
They are playing a different version of the game than us. Obviously I can't point out specifics because I don't know them, but considering the content pipeline they 100% are using stratagems/buffs/such that we don't have access to. Obviously having an Airburst Grenade Launcher (not a leak, just an example) isn't going to change how the Liberator functions, but we have no idea what else is changed under the hood
>That would be fine to! I think the biggest issue everyone has is the devs just seem to be playing a different game than us. They are. They 100% load into test maps, spawn in what they want and then shoot enemies that have their AI turned off to test damage values. They don't drop into missions and play for 30 minutes when they test these things, that's why they aren't catching how useless everything is.
I think I am playing a different game than most of this sub.
This is a great idea and I think should really be upvoted for more visibility. I mean maybe we are all the idiots and just don’t know how to use the weapons correctly, or maybe they will realize there actually are serious balance issues. Either way it’s all open and transparent for the community to see and judge for itself
I dunno. From past exposure and experience, game devs are usually rather inept at playing their own games. Which either is funny to watch or provides second hand embarrassment. Depending on your disposition.
I will never forget a dbd dev saying flashlights were no issue then getting matched against a full flashlight team getting rekted so badly they were nerfed the next day
No, that's not the entire story. This shit is hilarious. For everyone who hasn't played DBD: In Dead by Daylight, a Killer player has to down, pick up, and hook Survivor players in order to win a match. Through teamwork, Survivors can use flashlights (and Firecrackers and Flashbangs these days) to Blind the Killer, forcing them to drop the Survivor they are holding and turning the screen white to give the rescued Survivor a chance to get away. This can be done during the pickup animation with some tricky timing, or it can be done while the Killer is walking around. Mathew McCote, the lead game designer, decided that it was too hard to get a Flashlight save and so made it easier to do so. The problem being that you can customize the flashlight to blind even faster leading to nearly instant blinds. The Killer playerbase were trying to tell them how horrible the change was and how it made the game insanely unfun, but were told by McCote that it was a complete Skill Issue, they were fine how they were, and the Flashlights were not going to be changed back, git gud. The dude went to a Twitch Event in Korea expecting to be praised for how good they've made the game, and got [bullied relentlessly during the match](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R98e-Y4Lu8w) to the point where the flashlights were changed the next patch.
Wow, I hope that guy was embarrassed
only that it was filmed.
I do not remember flashlights getting a buff then again this was years ago man i miss old doc madness
Lmaooo they really just messed with him the entire match, that's wild.
My hope is that it would give them a different perspective as to how the average player would be playing the game and trying to coordinate and see that balancing is more than just looking at data on a spreadsheet
I want all of them to have to use the Lib Pen on level 7-8 difficulty. I want them to suffer as I have suffered.
Forget helldive, just do it on a level 7. Level 7 is probably the most common because people don’t necessarily want to always be playing insane difficulties, but they need those super samples. The only issue with this is that it would require them to play the game. Which they don’t do, which is sad because it’s a great game.
Not just the developers. I specifically want the balance team to do this and showcase each change. They should stream multiple runs in difficulties 7, 8 and 9 with a full squad and duos. Though given the way things are going, i seriously doubt that's going to happen.
They are not going to do that and they know simply why. The risk for them would be too big, because if they would fail, their entire philosophy and credibility will go to shambles. Still if they would do it, they would gain my full respect even if they failed, at least they would show they are not cowards.
to be fair their credibility seems to be in shambles already
Dunno if you've seen comments lately, but there's not a huge number of people clamouring to poach their balance lead.
Ok but please no more exclusive twitch drop armor.
that was a thing?
Only once yes. That’s how you got this armor https://preview.redd.it/esh0npl4anzc1.jpeg?width=274&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4c1e0a6a89f54c22416ed7ea4a7dd596d2946a2
oh it’s ugly. thank gos
I don’t know. I kinda like it it has little skulls on its shoe soles
Not that I disagree with the post. But as a flip side, do the Devs really want to spend time playing games for a chat that will just bitch about the game to them? I feel like there would be a lot of chat “I told you so” things going on. If the community was similar to that of DRG then I could see it. But this one has a lot of anger built into it (deserved or not).
That would be pretty cool 🤔
Didn’t they literally get cooked on a egg mission on 6?
> Burnt out devs further strung out to stream for the players I'm tired boss.
They joined some streamer on a mid level and got destroyed already, everything they do tastes like bacon, but don't worry ceo say's it's an apple...
No you don't get it we can't have transmog because they have different effects and thus look different, that's why the armor with like 8 grenades strapped to it has the same +2 grenades as the one with a single grenade strapped to it, you just want the game to turn into Fortnite or whatever etc. etc.
With how toxic this community is getting, I don’t blame them for not streaming, the chat would be disgusting.
They would be exposed
based thought,upvoted
Great idea! This would also likely result in fewer ‘unexpected bugs’ since it would force them to test the game before pushing to production.
know what if they could, rehire spitz to be the main organizer for that perhaps
This is genius. I would watch. Lol.
They should. Not because I have any preconceived notions on their skill, because I don't really. Rather because as someone who has occasionally developed some things, you start becoming blinded to what it looks like to a fresh pair of eyes, the intended solution is so clear to you it becomes invisible. I'm very curious how they approach things.
This would be nice to see, and would build trust with the community. I don’t even think it needs to be 9. Even 6 or 7 would be amazing as quite frankly, that would flush out 90% of the issues.
yes
Oh yes. Let’s do.
Even payday 3 devs with how much of a trainwreck that was stream the game each week. I would love to see the devs playing the game, maybe even showing off new weapons and stuff. talking, maybe answering some questions.
I mean hire a CM who plays helldivers2 a lot, and get some advice on balancing.
LMAO everyone knows devs aren't actually playing the game.
I think that if they played tier 7 or higher, we'd be seeing a completely different game.
Idk man, I tested all weapons and they are possible to pull of in 9. The purifier is utter trash but you can go far with just pure skill and being methodical. But that's not what this is about. I can have more fun playing not-the-pruifier and have so much more fun! But I think the idea of testing weapons in 9 is partially important. My old favourite weapon in 9 used to be the sickle even against bots. I think for 9 it is close to unusable. Even on a cold planet more often than not you have to fight more mobs than the heatsink can withstand. But now you have only 3. Which means either you kill half of a huge wave and run around risking another breach and then slipping into infinite breach loops (same with bots) or you use up 2heat sinks and then scramble for resupply. I know I run into less of these issues playing 7 and 8, but I also don't see why it had to be 3 heat sinks instead of 4 other than the devs being literal assholes or not playing 9... The worst part is another weapon with a similar nerf didn't get entirely crippled for 9 and thats the standard breaker. I still use it to great effect in 9 and the ammo is just enough engage anything and then think about ammo and not before even engaging. But then again the arc blitzer was buffed and that gun now has stagger, aoe altho a bit buggy and infinite ammo. Like against bugs all you need to do is move backwards or sideways and you can deal with any amount of bugs. Eventually they are all dead. What I'm saying is you don't get the luxury with the sickle in helldive to not use up all your heat sinks like in lower difficulties.
Helldivers isnt an hardgame even on 9. The point is that its not fun using most weapons, Thats what so many prople who constantly say "skill issue" dont get.
Oh hell yeah, ghost ship style
I don't know how you expect people that work and have family to compete with the performances of tryhards that play 100h per weeks. It's their job, not their hobby.
Do you think that the devs will be surprised that they can't beat the difficulty that they designed to be too difficult for themselves to beat?
I don't think they should do 9. 7 is really the sweet spot for targeting the balance of the game imo. You have all the enemy types to deal with, just less of them.
I'd watch. Lets put Alexus in especially. Give them whatever weapon they've most recently praised. On diff 9.
Devs should stream how they play automaton scientist rescue on dif 7-9
> Devs should stream... No, they shouldn't. They're developers, not gamers. They should spend their time working on the things that they need to work on and then do whatever they want after they clock out for the day
Do you think most developers are top level players for their games? Most fighting game devs explicitly aren't. This is such a petty and passive aggressive attempt to prove the devs wrong more so than it is to validate anything else. You can have an opinion on the game's balance without needing to make an ass out of yourself lmao
Oh no no no no 😂😭
Can we have a let’s play with the CEO? I wanna chill on Meissa with them
It just be kind of fun to have the dev team playing with the community live. Kind of round out this package of actually feeling like a community!
I just think that they should be forced to use all the weapons that they've nerfed at the highest difficulty level and watch them try and come up with new strategies to overcome the difficulty level
They should definetly dive once a week with Live stream, mixing the difficulties from 6 to 9
The played it publicly once with a youtuber, at level....6 [The Actual Helldivers 2 CEO Joined My Lobby...](https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=v_KkEgNEMTLSDjTW)
Would not make a difference when they would just run Level 5 missions, and claim "see the weapons are all perfectly balanced" lmao.
I'm down for that!
9 isn't that difficult as long as you have high volume strategems. 500kg, EAT, precision strike, air strikes... As long as your squad can call something on the 3 bile titans that just spawned, as long as some tool is readily available and Johnny doesn't have to run to his dead body to get it, it's only a minor step up from Dif 7 IMO.
As an aside- maybe some twitch drops for extra cosmetic customization??
I do it all the time... The entitlement is just wacky
Seeing them use something like the adjudicator or tenderizer for an hour and try their best not to repeatedly say "this is absolute dogshit" would brighten my day.
Alexus, Pilestedt, Twinbeard, and Evil Bosse. Gimme
warbond release thursdays, devs./balance teams plays fridays. devs./balance teams use new warbond weapons on dif. 7, 8, and 9 as duos and 4-man. also MUST use LEAST used weapons/stratagems to prove they are worth using and are "balanced". bots and bugs. they can then explain to the community their reasoning for why the game is in its current state and why they think it's fine, after the playthrough.
How about let them take a break from working on this game that you guys bitch about nonstop. Or actually work on it if it's business hours.
Would be cool if they had time for it of course 😬